Financial Freedom

Almost everybody has heard of Dave Ramsey. He wrote the book Financial Peace, which I recommend to everyone. I’m reading it for the second time cause I obviously missed some things the first time, AND because Shawna didn’t read it with me. We’re getting things together on the money side of life so we won’t be poor anymore. We’re reading Financial Peace and taking a course at our church being taught by our radically extreme financial counselor – Joe Sangl. You should really click on these links and check out what I’m talking about, especially the Joe Sangl site cause he takes Dave Ramsey’s principles (along with some other well known guys) and talks about them in such simple terms and encourages everyone to success, plus he provides simple to use tools on his site for budgeting and planning your debt payoff and such… It’s good stuff.

You might have guessed that since I’m reading this book I’m going to write about it on here. You’re right. Only I’m not going to go chapter by chapter like I have with Five Love Languages. I’m going to take certain parts of it and of course discuss the principles, but also share some pretty personal and emotional stories from mine and Shawna’s experiences. We have learned so much and are still learning and actually starting to DO what we’re learning.

So why do I think this is important enough to write about:
1. Most failed marriages are due to money or money was at least one of the main issues.
2. Schools aren’t teaching young people how to be smart with finances, and most of our parents aren’t either.
3. Our country (not just our government, the population in general) has been on the wrong path financially for DECADES (notice I didn’t say years cause this is not about politics and we can’t blame the Bush administration for crap that has been REALLY broke since about when welfare started.

I’m going to make this as much of my personal stories and thoughts as possible without simply repeating or even summarizing what Dave Ramsey has written or what Joe Sangl is posting on his blog. Doing this will force me to seriously focus, study, and do what I’m reading/writing and hopefully you and I can both get some positive from it… Check back for more posts on finances.